Cite as: 538 U. S. 135 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
cases in which an injury has multiple causes, some related to railroad employment and others unrelated to that employment. Such cases, we think, are controlled by the language just noted, which states that the railroad is "liable in damages" so long as the injury was caused "in whole or in part" by its "negligence." 45 U. S. C. § 51.
The statutory context bolsters our reading, for interpreting § 1 to require apportionment would put that provision in tension with the rest of the statute. As recounted earlier, see supra, at 145, several of the FELA's provisions expand a railroad's liability by abolishing common-law defenses that limited employees' ability to recover against their employers. Among the innovations, the Act expressly directs apportionment of responsibility between employer and employee based on comparative fault. See § 53 (set out in relevant part supra, at 144, n. 6). The statute expressly prescribes no other apportionment.
Essentially, then, Norfolk asks us to narrow employer liability without a textual warrant. Reining in employer liability as Norfolk proposes, however, is both unprovided for by the language of the FELA and inconsistent with the Act's overall recovery facilitating thrust. Accordingly, we find Norfolk's plea an untenable reading of the congressional silence. Cf. Edmonds v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 443 U. S. 256, 268, n. 23 (1979) ("It would be particularly curious for Congress to refer expressly to the established principle of comparative negligence, yet say not a word about adopting a new rule limiting the liability of the [defendant] on the basis of [another party's] negligence.").
Norfolk's view also runs counter to a century of FELA jurisprudence. No FELA decision made by this Court so much as hints that the statute mandates apportionment of damages among potentially liable tortfeasors. Indeed, Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U. S. 500 (1957), suggests the opposite. In Rogers, we described as "irrelevant" the question "whether the immediate reason" for an employee's
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